“So Microsoft is out there saying that the iPhone is useless and irrelevant to business or lacks business savvy,” AJ blogs for Marketcircle. “Maybe they need to be more clear and argue that the iPhone is irrelevant to the enterprise. I can buy that argument, but business in general, especially small business? I don’t and can’t buy that argument. My stance is that the iPhone is the best small business phone out there. The reason: It’s flipping easy to use!”
“iPhone has the multi-tasking Mac OS X at its core. Mac OS X already trumps Microsoft’s Desktop OS, never mind their mobile OS. You can already read MS Word documents with Mac OS X out of the box using TextEdit. As a developer, I can tell you the .doc reading capabilities are right in Cocoa. You can open PowerPoint documents in Keynote and I’m sure Apple has something up their sleeve for Excel documents,” AJ writes.
AJ writes, “The iPhone OS is plenty capable. I think it’s a matter of timing. Apple is releasing the most powerful OS a mobile device has ever seen. That in itself is a major challenge, never mind dealing with developer kits and whatnot. Let them get the basics right first.”
“We all know that there are more consumers and small business users than there are enterprise users,” AJ writes. “The iPhone has everything that a small business needs… When the time is right and the economics make sense, I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts that Apple will have a process of getting third party apps on the iPhone.”
“So again – why is the iPhone is the most important small business phone? Because more business users will use it because they want to use it, instead of being forced to use it,” AJ writes.
AJ writes, “Microsoft must be worried about Apple delivering a better OS on a device than they can on a desktop, otherwise why bother with all the FUD?”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Rainy Day” for the heads up.]
When all you have is FUD, FUD is all you have. One of our favorite lines: “Mac OS X already trumps Microsoft’s Desktop OS, never mind their mobile OS.”
Good read. Dude nailed it. My partners and I can’t wait to get the iPhones this June. We just hope there won’t be a backlog. The selling point for us was how easily it will be (at least in theory) to sync our calendar and contact data with the phones. Something that we just can’t do easily right now and it’s a pain.
Yeah … there seems to be a whole lot of FUD aimed at the iPhone. What’s the battery life? Will it break if dropped on cement? What about 3rd-party apps? And it isn’t even available yet! Well, there will be three million beta testers in just a few months. We should get answers by the time Leopard springs onto the scene.
DLMeyer – the Voice of G.L.Horton’s Stage Page Pod Cast
The thing is that Microsoft and the other phone related companies have confused the actual needs of users with the feature list they offer. Just because a phone supposedly does xyz doesn’t mean people practically need it. Plus, even if they do need whatever business feature, if it doesn’t work well then it’s useless.
The iPhone may not do spreasheets and open office documents but it doesn’t need to. If you regularly need to do that sort of thing then you’re likely going to need a bigger screen and more power and are probably going to have a laptop.
Just because Microsoft say people need something doesn’t mean they want it. Luckily the public seem to be realising that across the board.
Like my grandma always said
“When life gives you FUD, make fudge out of it.”
Of course, she also said
“When life goes to pot, make fudge out of it.”
She was a happy person.
That’s all Microsoft has is FUD.
“”So again – why is the iPhone is the most important small business phone? Because more business users will use it because they want to use it, instead of being forced to use it,” AJ writes.”
This is where the rubber meets the road, folks. And this is why iPhone will create a whole new segment of the market where none existed before – because people who would never use a smartphone, due to complexity, incompatibility, learning curve, whatever, will not hesitate to use an iPhone. There is no learning curve. It’s about as difficult to use as iTunes, and thanks to the iPod almost everyone knows how to use that already.
@ TT
“When life goes to pot, make some… you’ve gotta make a… aw man, I’m kinda hungry. Hey, do you like Frank Zappa? I’ve got Hot Rats on my iPod, dude. Yeah… that’s pretty sweet. Aw, I totally spaced that I was talking about something! So like, when your life goes bad, you gotta just be cool, man. Or something. It’s like that one song by Phish – …birds of a feather, they’re flocking outside… ya know? I mean, wow. That’s heavy stuff. Are you gonna eat the rest of that sandwich? okay, that’s cool.”
“because people who would never use a smartphone, due to complexity, incompatibility, learning curve, whatever, will not hesitate to use an iPhone.”
This is so true, highly functional mobile devices won’t be just for “geeks” anymore. “It’s the only smartphone I would buy for mom.”
i totally agree with ‘much FUD’. Let’s judge the product when it ships. Not all Apple products have been breakout sucesses in sales (Newton, Cube). iPhone may not sell as well as Apple expects. Apple has struggled with QA issues (MacBook, iMac G5) with past products so let’s judge iPhone when it’s in your hands.
I want a phone made by Apple but for me, it all comes down to $. Not just initial $ but other monthly fees as well. I don’t need an internet browser on my phone. I barely use the camera on my existing phone.
Omygosh! It can’t read office documents!
Just about how many minutes would it take Apple to put Textedit on the iPhone? It would take longer to make the icon. ha
Guaranteed they will make it happen in due time, but not at its launch, as it will muddy up all the cool unique features.
What better than to have it and hype it as one of the first free upgrades.
C1, what you extracted/said is true – if the iPhone is lacking in the “gotchas” the MS FUDmeisters are claiming for it. There’s more than enough time for Apple to address most of the concerns already floated – and some they hadn’t thought of. And that’s the sort of thing Apple – unlike most Windows-box assemblers or MS itself – is good at. That’s the sort of thing hundreds of thousands of Windows users per quarter have come to realize. If they mess up, though, just one little thing … BOY will we hear about it!
DLMeyer
You can already read MS Word documents with Mac OS X out of the box using TextEdit.
Earth to fanboy – that’s a big Maybe. As long as the doc isn’t at all complex, TextEdit works. I’ve had to install Word at numerous client sites because they had to read Word docs on their Macs, and TextEdit wan’t up to the job.
Sorry.
hey asshat
MDN has enough adverts, we dont need posters like you trolling for hits. Go toss off !
All this talk about not being able to read Word documents, I feel that Microsoft is going to take a dump when they release the iPhone with “Pages Lite” included on it.
uhhh was that the real C1 talking about zappa and sandwiches ?
C1
“My mouth taste like purple”.
-Jack Donaghy
It takes two hands to operate and you have to stare at the phone. Corporate IT won’t let you connect to your Outlook server with this “non Blackberry”.
Who is this phone not for? Anyone who drives a car for one. Try dialing with NO KEYPAD. Try dialing WITHOUT LOOKING AT THE ROAD.
This phone is for kids and college students with lots of free time. The kind who buy a Rev B MacBook Pro because its 5% faster than their Rev A MacBook Pro they bought “last semester”.
That being said, Steve did promise “more phones are coming” at Macworld.
DL – True, as we did with the iPod. Were you around for the launch, when the trolls came out of the woodwork with all the same tired old saws?
“It will be easy to loose.” Well then maybe you should pin it to your coat next to your bus number, genius. I’ve never lost a cell phone, or an iPod, and I’ve been carrying around small consumer electronics devices, almost completely unsupervised, for the better part of 3 decades now.
“Ripping all my music will be a huge hassle.” Time has proven that one a red herring. It took me about a month to do mine, just a little each day, but it’s not like you have to chisel 1’s and 0′ into stone tablets or anything. Jeebus. Grab a stck of 10 CDs, and rip them while you look at your news, sports, vidoes, lolcats, porn, whatever..
“It’s just an MP3 player.” …that one can actually navigate without a degree in project management. Turns out that it was all about the interface, stupid. Who’d a think it? You mean, a little thing that I touch all day long should be… pleasant to the touch? Inconceivable!!!
If the iPhone only does exactly what Steve demonstrated, then it will be the best mobile phone ever made. In addition to that, it will be the best mobile computing platform ever made. And it’s more than likely that it will do much more than we’ve been shown. But no matter how good it is, there will be a herd of nay sayers saying nay (we are the knights who say… NAY!) about every little bump in the road. It won’t matter, though, because iPhone isn’t for people who listen to geeky trolls, it’s for regular people who have lives, and just want something that’s kinda cool, and just works.
-c
“uhhh was that the real C1 talking about zappa and sandwiches ?”
I’m not sure, short term memory isn’t what it used to…
Hi, I’m Dori.
@JadisOne
“We just hope there won’t be a backlog”
I can almost guarantee there will be one.
Sorry.
If MS had any confidence, or was a genuine partner for Apple, it would be saying that it was looking forward to putting Mac Office onto it.. No?
mornin’ Chrissy !
Good to see ya ! .. I know what you mean about the loss of a few short term brain cells …
uhhhh … Hey !! Good morning Chrissy !!
@ Macaday
You make some very good sense.
@ oh my
Do I know you? ;P
Why is the room spinning and filled with sand?
I’ve heard the knock on the iPhone not being able to voice dial, which is important for making a call while driving — not a safe practice in any event. But we are talking about an OS X based system here. If voice dialing is not included on introduction and Apple at some point wants to boost sales, that feature is a painless software upgrade — free upgrade at that — away. Perhaps Apple is waiting to do just that to demonstrate to consumers the advantage of the OS X based iPhone over the wannabees.